Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Over
the past several months, PCG has been working in cooperation with the Pacific Nuclear Council (PNC) to
study the effect of the events at Fukushima Daiichi on nuclear energy industry
communications in Pacific Rim nations. Using a web-based survey, we sought to
gain insight into best communication practices, priority topics and future
plans for nuclear energy education on the Pacific Rim.

You may
not be familiar with the PNC – an organization composed of nuclear societies in
Pacific Rim nations with a mission of advancing cooperation in the region on
nuclear energy. After the events at Fukushima Daiichi, the PNC decided to
conduct a survey of nuclear energy communications professionals in Pacific Rim
nations, the first survey of its kind in the region.

PCG did
the actual survey work, generating participation among communicators from Japan,
Korea, China, Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, Russia, Canada, Mexico and the
U.S. We reached out to communicators in several other nations as well, but
didn’t generate participation from them for this survey. The PNC intends to
conduct the survey annually to grow the richness, depth and breadth of the data
and to track trends longitudinally.

Mimi
Limbach, Partner at PCG, shared the findings at the 18th Pacific Basin Nuclear
Conference in Busan, South Korea. The top line – respondents spent much of
their time during the past year correcting misinformation about nuclear energy.
No surprise there, as critics of nuclear energy are active throughout the
Pacific Basin, and Fukushima caused a lot of confusion about our
technology.

Other points
of interest:

Respondents highlighted the need to make technical
information about nuclear energy more accessible and easy to understand.

The general public, media, government officials and
regulators were the top audiences (in that order).

Safety, waste disposal, cost and health effects were the top
four issues (in that order).

The need to develop and implement an effective crisis plan
was an overwhelming priority. Fukushima demonstrated that not all crisis plans
are created equal.

One surprising
finding was that, for many organizations, the use of social media appears to be
relatively immature. Perhaps this is attributable in part to the relative
conservatism of nuclear energy organizations. For example, you would be
surprised at how few nuclear utilities in the U.S. have a robust social media
program. However, about a third of those surveyed intended to launch or grow
their social media programs in the next year.